Category: Avoidant Attachment

I am getting more insight into when my inner child with her host of unresolved hopes and fears and pain is running the show lately. My abandonment wound has been triggered a lot in the past few days and it was easier to give away my power or alternatively become the ‘bad’ one again who is ‘withholding’ than to recognise that due to discomfort I am scrambling again for attention and love when contact is cut due to someone being upset with me because I am justifiably struggling with something.

I just know when I act from my inner adult I feel a greater sense of strength and solidity within myself and that requires recognising the far younger more vulnerable part that lies hidden or covered by defences. It can be painful when abandonment anxiety and depression strike as both create in my body and psyche so often a potent chemical cocktail that at times pushes me to the brink of available resources to contain.

Pete Walker addresses the issue of the ‘abandonment depression’ a lot in his own work and book on Complex PTSD. Much as all as it can feel hard to be left ‘all alone’, I have heard it said that in adulthood we cannot be abandoned by someone, only left. That said I do think there are times our emotions need to be empathised with and understood by friends, family and partners otherwise if we are judged for certain things and not empathised with, on one level we are abandoned on an emotional level.

It’s an issue Alain de Botton addresses in his wonderful book The Course of Love which tells the story of a mythical couple Rabih and Kirsten in which he delves into the host of insecurities and psychological defences that can plague a couple’s intimate relationships as it develops over a course of years. In the book the tale of the relationship iw told in normal type face is interspersed with sections in italics in which de Botton highlights the underground issues affecting the couple. I particularly enjoyed the following paragraphs.

We would ideally remain able to laugh, in the gentlest way, when we are made the special target of a sulker’s fury. We would recognise the touching paradox. The sulker may be six foot one and holding down adult employment, but the real message is poignantly retrogressive : ‘Deep inside, I remain an infant, and right now I need you to be my parent. I need you to correctly guess what is ailing me, as people did (or rather failed to do) when I was a baby, when my ideas of love first formed.

We do our sulking lovers the greatest possible favour when we are able to regard their tantrums as we would those of an infant. We are so alive to the idea that it’s patronising to be thought of as younger than we are, we forget that it is also, at times, the greatest privilege for someone to look beyond our adult self in order to engage with – and forgive – the disappointed, furious, inarticulate child within.

In a more evolved world, one a little more alive to the Greek ideal of love, we would perhaps know how to be a bit less clumsy, scared and aggressive when wanting to point something out, and rather less combative and sensitive when receiving feedback. The concept of education within a relationship would then lose some of its unnecessarily eerie and negative connotations. We would accept that in responsible hands, both projects, teaching and being taught (in love), calling attention to another’s faults and letting ourselves be critiqued – might after all be loyal to the true purpose of love.

There is something about love and vulnerability and hidden need that can cause us to age regress and be taken back to that painful time we stood all alone longing for the attention and love that was not available due to the absence, withdrawal or inattention of others, so much needed for us to feel hold, loved, contained and seen. Learning to hold ourselves in this state takes some considerable time for those of us with anxious and/or avoidant attachment issues. Its a work in progress being honest with ourselves, learning to extend ourselves in empathy into another hidden world and letting the unhealed child that so longs for attention or consideration been seen, held, accepted, nurtured and loved.

Being held hostage by an inner persectuor-protector figure in our inner world is common for those of us who were highly sensitive and suffered significant childhood trauma or insecure, anxious or broken attachments. It is an issue dealt with comprehensively by Elaine Aron in her book The Undervalued Self. In chapter six of the book she outlines what this inner complex is and why it exists drawing on the work of psychological analyst Donald Kalsched. (See my previous post :

The Persecutor-Protector needs to be understood and worked with by those of us who want to stop isolating in fantasy totally (not that we won’t still want to introvert which is important for the creative amongst us and for touching base with our inner world and life) and convincing ourselves we are not skilled or gifted enough to have a valuable contribution to make to the world.

I will open this post with a quote taken from Elaine’s book.

A protector-persecutor that arises from insecure attachment is often the harshest. In these cases the protector may replace the missing maternal or paternal presence with an addiction, whether to smoking, alcohol, work, or something else. Or it may create a vision of perfect love the child never received. It encourages the unbearable craving and yearning while undermining or belittling things in the world that may actually satisfy some of the craving. It says they are not enough, or not real, just lies or illusions, or will not work out in the long run.

Since attachment trauma often involves an unbearable separation, such as divorce or the death of a parent, the protector-persecutor very often rules out love because it brings the risk of loss, which, it supposes, you cannot bear, as you could not when it happened before. Until you work out your own answer to these scenarios, it’s impossible to convince the persecutor-protector that you can live with the pain of separations and loss, that you can tolerate in future what you could not in the past…..

(however) the good news is that as you struggle to accept the fact that all relationships eventually end, you may become far more prepared for loss than those who are secure because they had good childhoods.

When the persecutor-protector keeps you from being intimate with someone you love, do not give up. Freeing yourself to love is perhaps one of the greatest challenges a person with a troubled past can face, and even a partial victory must be acknowledged for the triumph that it is. Further, the undervalued self simply cannot be healed without finding some freedom to love. It is linking and love that take you out of ranking and undervaluing.

The protector-persecutor either as a unit or in one of its two forms, tries to break down every link you make, both outer links with friends and inner links that would end the dissociation it wishes to maintain. However, you can see why your attempts to dialogue with the innocent (inner child) might lead to mysterious resistance.

Emotions, memories, current thoughts and behaviours, and bodily states related to a trauma can all be dissociated. Memories may be repressed, literally unlinked from consciousness. Or your emotions may not be linked to current memories or events. You may feel numb, lacking all emotion, or all too conscious of emotions that seem to arise for no reason. Your body may be unlinked from memories, so you remember the events of the trauma but have no idea what happened to your body during it. Your body will still be dissociated from your thoughts, with the result that you are hardly aware of its needs. Or the body does not link with your actions, and you feel unreal or detached as you go through the day….you do things that make no sense or are self destructive but your behaviour is not linked to its real causes. You may have stress related illnesses because memories, feelings, or thoughts are pushed down in the mind then arise in the body. Or you may have recurring nightmares that seem unrelated to anything going on in your life.

As for outer links the persecutor-protector makes every linking situation seem to be about ranking, usually with you as the inferior, although it can also make you feel superior – “he’s not good enough for me” – if that will keep you out of a real, close, lasting relationship. The persecutor-protector might allow you to link in a limited way with someone who likes you by creating a false self that adapts to the world, but you know you are not really connected or authentic.

Using examples from her real practice Aron shows how clients dreams often contain persecutor figures and details the means it uses to break links, just as the witch in the fairytale of Rapunzel tries to disconnect the prince from ever reaching Rapunzel in her tower by cutting off her long hair. This occurs due the prevalence of earlier losses that were never fully integrated into conscious awareness and the fear of not being able to survive the feelings should it ever happen again.

We can work to become more aware of how the complex operates in our own lives. Some of these are listed below and appear in Aron’s book and they correspond to some of the tactics avoidants or insecure people use to maintain distance or sabotage relationships with others:

When we are supercritical of the other, especially after times of connection.

When we over idealise to the degree that minor failures are blown out of proportion.

When we mistrust or don’t bother to get a reality check or talk things over

When you feel crushed if someone doesn’t want to be with you all the time.

When you look down on others for wanting to be with you more than you want to be with them.

When you decide “it’s all over” as soon as there is the slightest conflict.

When you are obsessed with concerns one of you is needy, dependent, or weak.

When you cannot stop thinking about the other leaving or betraying you or dying.

When you cannot see any flaw at all in the others, as if he or she is a god.

In addition Aron outlines some of the unconscious rules the persecutor-protector can use to keep us safe.

No intimacy. Never open up about personal issues, ignore or belittle the disclosures of others, be flippant or rude, leave if someone wants to be closer

No arguing. Always be nice, end relationships as soon as there is a whiff of conflict or if the other is angry, walk out on arguments (rather than asking for time out)

No growth. Turn down opportunities or invitations to do anything new, do not aspire, act stupid so no one will think of you when an opportunity arises.

No dating or marriage. Postpone, be unattractive, stick to crushes or fantasies, say with someone who isn’t good for you, have affairs with unavailable people, be forever young or flirty when it’s not necessary.

No strong feelings. Stay in control at all times, don’t cry, get angry, be terminally cool.

No sex or enjoyment of it. Avoid, be mechanical, split off, get numb with substances before hand, remove all emotion from sex.

No believing someone who say he or she cares about you. Bat off compliments and expressions of caring and affection. Don’t believe they are genuine.

No asking for help. Be ruthlessly self sufficient, be suspicious, never complain, withdraw.

No honesty. Just say what you think others want to hear. Be careful with what you express especially when asked to be yourself.

No hope. Don`t expect help, joy or good things. Do not place faith in anyone.

No standing up for yourself. Just let others say or do whatever they want, don’t cause trouble, don’t expect justice, respect or fairness.

No trusting. Don’t be fooled; they don’t really care about you (a favourite thing the protector will say to you inwardly.)

As you can see its a pretty harsh joyless confined existence living with a strong persecutor protector complex inside of us, but we can work to understand these rules and challenge the p-p on them when it tries to use them to keep ourselves and others in line.

Your goal is to convince the p-p that breaking its rules and taking risks is working out for you and that you want more freedom…

Listen to its disagreements because ignoring it wont work according to Aron… the p-p needs to be heard but challenged to give up the limiting rules and restrictions it uses to keep you trapped.

There is nothing worse for a child than having our inner reality undermined. Being told “no you don’t feel that way” “just get over it” “that didn’t hurt, you are such a baby” and worse things and this is the legacy sadly of those brought up in narcissistic homes. Children raised in these homes learn to shut up and repress the reality of their True Self pretty quickly (especially anger which goes along with invalidation abuse but has to be supressed for us to survive). We carry great fear and there is never really any freedom to take an unimpeded breath. For those of us who meet partners in life later who aren’t this way and want to see, hear, validate and love us as we are, the struggle to trust is even harder. IT IS something therapist and author Janet Woitiz deals with in her book The Intimacy Struggle which I have had for years but am rereading now I am in a new relationship that is so vastly different to the old ones.

There are ten fears that Janet outlines which hit the nail on the head for me lately. Children from alcoholic or narcissistic and emotionally neglectful homes often will detonate a relationship that offers them exactly what they need as soon as it gets close and intimate, its due to a profound fear of abandonment we cannot often even fully admit to ourselves. Partners of such people go through shock and confusion as the one they love acts out, especially after a time of closeness and connection. The adult child will quickly pull the rug out from under such closeness by starting a fight, disappearing or going disconnected in some way, all due to not being able to stand the heat of their own feelings of sadness and longing for what they were denied needing or wanting from a young age which are evoked in intimate relationships. As pointed out by Robert Firestone who has done a lot of work with inner voices and the inner critic often we will start to hear criticisms and doubts in our heads when intimacy threatens us putting ourselves or the other person down if we carry past unresolved attachment wounds. Its something addressed too in the book on attachment by therapists Amir Levine and Rachel Heller ‘Attached : The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find – And Keep Love.

Its helpful to know when our fear of intimacy is being evoked. It may not always stop us acting out but it will start to bring awareness which is the first step, then maybe we can have a talk to our partner about it later if we can be honest and they are open. Partners of adult children of trauma, addiction or neglect can also educate themselves to the vulnerabilities of their partners if they don’t suffer this way and are more securely attached.

Below is a list of fears which Janet Woitiz outlines in her excellent book.

Adult Children fear hurting others due to their own pain and sensitivity. They make excellent loyal partners for this reason but such fear may make them into people pleasers because their fear of conflict is so high.

Adult Children fear the person others see them to be does not exist. They were not able to be their full selves and were never unconditionally accepted.

Adult Children fear they will lose control if they love someone or connect with them, often due to the fact their homes were out of control or they had overly controlling parents.

Adult Children will deny things hurt or matter, its a defensive approach to make themselves appear bullet proof and deny their vulnerability which was never safe before.

Adult Children fear any love given is not real, things going well is so unfamiliar to them it seems unreal since all they knew growing up was chaos. High drama doesn’t go along with a healthy relationship and they never experienced peaceful connected relating so they have no template for it.

Adult Children fear their anger when exposed will lead to abandonment. They have a power keg of it anyway due to the way they were treated growing up. They have difficulty asking for help then get upset if partners don’t mind read due to a fear of expressing needs.

Adult Children feel shame for being themselves and they feel responsible for everything that went wrong in their families. This is unrealistic but its very true for them. So how could you love them when they are so bad?

Adult Children fear that if you really get to know them you will find out they are unlovable. They were probably led to believe this anyway due to the way they were treated or blamed for things growing up that were not their fault. They often feel failures that they could not fix their dysfunctional family.

Adult Children have difficulty tolerating the discomfort that is a natural part of getting close to others. Feelings naturally get stirred up with intimacy and adult children fear their feelings or don’t really know how to deal with them so often they cut and run.

Adult Children fear they will be left and this fear harks back to their history. It is important these fears are not discounted and that a loving partner gives them constant reassurance, they didn’t ask to be abandoned growing up, it wasn’t their fault and they don’t “have to get over it”. Their fear needs to be understood and soothed until they can learn to trust in a present that is profoundly different to their traumatic past.

Reading the book I recommended yesterday Anxious in Love is putting into perspective for me why things can hurt and go so wrong for us who suffer PTSD, Complex PTSD or anxious and insecure attachment in relationships. As the authors point out in Part 2 : Connecting With the One You Love different parts of the brain are operating for us and our partners who don’t see what all the fuss is about when we respond with anxiety to certain events or triggers. I am being taken back with every word to my last relationship where I would get an hour long lecture on how wrong I had things to be responding in the way I did with little empathy shown.

In anxiety our forebrain (or rational brain) is emotionally hijacked by the lower brains (hind brain and mid brain) where centres such as the amygdala lie. Being responded to with logic as most of us know is tantamount to having a red flag waved in front of the face of a raging bull!!!! But we also need to understand our partner may be coping with the situation in the best way they know how while lacking a more complete understanding of how rationality has flown out the proverbial window.

In this situation what is called for is developing the ability to intentionally respond rather then becoming reactive. The solution is for each partner to understand and have an attitude of curiosity about what is happening for the other. It’s something an old therapist of mine would bring up a lot about by ex saying “its just sad he cannot have an attitude of curiosity about what is occurring for you”. To be told you are bad or wrong for responding as you do is just terrible and I think its a key to so called Borderline Personality Disorder sufferer’s struggle. Perceived abandonment when triggered can send us into a cascade or spiral that takes is into the darkest place for days and if we are left alone in it too long for some the feelings (what therapist Pete Walker calls the abandonment melange) can lead to suicide, addiction and other self destructive mechanisms of coping.

What Carolyn Daitch and Lissah Lorberbaum, authors of Anxious in Love offer instead is a way of each partner entering the other’s reality for a time to validate it, both the non anxious partner and the one who suffers anxiety. As sufferers of insecure attachment we can learn to understand our partner’s reactions and can learn to voice our needs in relationship in a less angry, attacking or accusative way. Often non sufferers who operate from the higher brain just do not understand the severity or intensity of our responses to triggers.

Lack of emotional flexibility is one of the hardest legacies of anxiety reactions in relationship, it shuts down emotional attunement between partners and makes an open dialogue impossible. Being able to set a time out when we know we are being triggered and our brain is going into hijack mode is useful, and hopefully our partner will accept it if we let them know what is going on with us. The alternative is they respond with emotional distance/withdrawal themselves, judgement and anger (being triggered themselves), misunderstanding or protest which can be very difficult. The more we can talk through these reactions and responses in our relationships the better change we have of resolving conflict and growing empathy and attunement. The more we can step into their shoes and understand what is happening the more we can make an “appeal to reason” while explaining what underlies our reaction.

Some partners may be even triggered by us saying what has triggered us, though. They may respond by telling us “that’s all in the past” but in that case they need to work to understand how emotional hijacking works and show empathy in any case. A person who is not willing to do this for those of us with insecure or anxious attachment may not, in the long run, be the best partner for us.

More detailed techniques for reconnecting are given in the book in later chapters of Part Two but today I thought I would just share what I have learned from the book so far for those not in the position to purchase a copy at this point in time. The book is building on my knowledge of many years of trying to deal with anxious attachment and its destructive effect on some of my relationships.

Because the experience of attunement with a significant other is powerful, ruptures in attuned connection bring about a sense of absence, loss, and even distress. Yet those ruptures in attunement are inevitable in all relationships, no matter how solid. There are times when you just fall out of sync with one another. It’s important, therefore, that you both have the ability to repair ruptures when they occur. Just as quickly as you fall out of sync, with some flexibility you can repair the disconnect and engage one another in attunement again.

Pain of early separations from our mother can haunt us for a long time and we may not always know what the pain is about. It’s an issue that Mark Wolynn, San Francisco based therapist on multigenerational trauma addresses at length in his book It Didn’t Start With You : How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle. The separation may not have been physical alone, it could be just that our mother was undergoing a depression, grieving a loss or being unseen and unnurtured by her own mother did not know how to be fully present for us. (According to Wolynn the original problem or disruption often lies a generation or two back and we may be unaware of it). We feel the loss and absence keenly and such feelings can cause us to actually turn away when our mother tries to connect with us another time.

Wolynn shares just such a story on page 175 about a baby Myrna whose mother leaves for three weeks. On her return as she waits and longs for her daughter to run to her Mryna’s mother experiences instead a daughter who turns away becoming even more distant. Rather than understand her daughter’s reactions and look for a way to restore the bond Myrna’s mother instead encourages her independence. The mother loses sight of her child’s vulnerability, so where did it go for Myrna? Answer in short. Into the unconscious.

Of course later when Myrna fell in love, love was experienced as a minefield and its something I can relate to as will anyone with insecure, avoidant or anxious attachment. Vulnerability of needing another opens up a pit of loss we do not fully understand and we can relate by sabotaging things further should we choose to deny or repress our true need feelings and vulnerability.

Mark Wolynn talks of interruptions to the flow of love and energy between parent and child a lot in his book. He knows a lot about it as he pursued a path of so called ‘spiritual bypassing’ seeking a healing he could not find in ashrams and through meditation (though he does use visionary meditations with a clients ancestors in order to effect healing of past wounds carried on). Wolynn did not heal his early trauma with his mother until years later understanding how its roots lay far back in his own mother and grandmother’s history and eventually becoming a therapist himself.

When our early experience with our mother is disrupted by a significant break in the bond, shards of pain and emptiness can shred our well being and disconnect us from the fundamental flow of life. Where the mother-child relationship remains severed, empty or fraught with indifference, a stream of negative images can lock the child in a pattern of frustration and self doubt. In extreme cases, when the negative images are continuous and unrelenting, frustration, rage, numbness, and insensitivity to others can emerge.

Psychopathic behaviour can be the result but the key result if often a form of pathological narcissism – an inability to truly connect and take in love.

According to Wolynn the majority of us have experienced some kind of break in the bond with our mothers. Many though, got enough of what was needed to be able to maintain healthy relationships later in life. Many of us were not so lucky. Ideally disruptions to attunement need to be healed in the context of any relationship. How we deal with them are important as are the beliefs about our inherent lovability. According to Janet Woititz adult children of addiction and trauma believed they will only be loved if they act in a pleasing happy way. No relationship can survive like this and neither can we.

Knowing what happened in the bond with our mother and the impact it had on our attachment style as well as inherent negative self beliefs and development of what Wolynn calls ‘core sentences of separation’ is vitally important if we wish to heal. We can become conscious of these, work to understand how they may be influencing our present and do inner work to change negative core beliefs we may have absorbed unconsciously so they do not continue to play our in our relationships. I have found so much help myself reading Wolynn’s book which I shared from extensively in my blog last year. It is well worth a look if you struggle to maintain healthy loving relationships in your own life and are working to understand how the flow of love between you and a parent (not only your mother) is impacting you in later life.

(Examples of core beliefs which negatively impact our capacity to love and be loved are : I’ll be left: I’ll be abandoned. I’ll be rejected. I’ll have nobody. I’ll lose control. I’ll be helpless. I don’t matter. I’m too much. I am not enough. I’ll be annihilated. I’ll be destroyed. I will push love away.)

Unconditional love is what a child should expect from a parent even though it rarely works out that way. I didn`t have that, and I was a very nervous watchful child. I was a little thug too because nobody was going to beat me up or see me cry. I couldn’t relax at home, couldn`t disappear into a humming space where I could be alone in the presence of the other. With the Depressed Dead wandering around the kitchen, and mice masquerading as ectoplasm, and sudden fits of piano playing, and the sometime revolver, and relentless brooding mountain range of my mother, and the scary bedtimes – if Dad was on nights and she came to bed it meant all night with the light on reading about the End Time – and the Apocalypse itself was never far away, well, home wasn`t really a place where you could relax… Ask for reassurance and it would never come. I never asked her if she loved me. She loved me on those days when she was able to love. I really believe that is the best she could do.

When love is unreliable and you are a child you assume that it is the nature of love – its quality – to be unreliable. Children do not find fault with their parents until later. In the beginning the love you get is the love that sets.

I did not know that love could have continuity. I did not know that human love could be depended upon. Mrs Winterson’s god was the God of the Old Testament and it may be that modelling yourself on a deity who demands absolute love from all of his children but thinks nothing of drowning them (Noah’s Ark), attempting to kill the ones who madden him (Moses), and letting Satan ruin the life of the most blameless of them all (Job), is bad love.

True, God reforms himself and improves thanks to his relationship with human beings, but Mrs Winterson was not an interactive type; she didn’t like human beings and she never did reform or improve (or repair????) She was always striking me down, and then making a cake to put things right, and very often after a lockout we`d walk down to the fish and chip shop the next night and sit outside on the bench eating from newspaper and watching people come and go.

For most of my life I have behaved in much the same way because that is what I learned about love.

Add to that my own wildness and intensity and love becomes pretty dangerous. I never did drugs, I did love – the crazy, reckless kind, more damage than healing, more heartbreak than health. And I fought and hit out and tried to put it right the next day. And I went away without a word and didn’t care.

Love is vivid. I never wanted the pale version. Love is full strength. I never wanted the diluted version. I never shied away from love`s hugeness but I had no idea that love could be as reliable as the sun. The daily rising of love…

Just re reading through key chapters in Jonice Webb’s book on Childhood Emotional Neglect, Running on Empty : Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect is reminding me of this question and how hard it can be to answer fully and honestly if we were not fully allowed to express ourselves or unfold ourselves and our feelings in our family of origin.

In the chapter Cognitive Secrets : The Special Problem of Suicidal Feelings, Jonice outlines the story of Robyn who becomes suicidal after what seems to be a ‘fun’ night with friends. What is not seen by her friends though or expressed by Robyn is her real and true self. As Jonice describes Robyn’s childhood she describes a loving family who did not allow any displays of so called ‘negative’ emotions :

Robyn’s parents seldom argued and they had very low tolerance for negativity of any kind When a conflict would break out between the children, as they do with all siblings, the parents would crack down by sending all parties to their rooms immediately (no matter what the fight was about).. their motto was “Zero Tolerance”. They also applied this role to complaining or any expression of unhappiness, sadness or frustration. The result was a quiet household. The children learned early on that if they had something negative on their minds, they had better keep it to themselves. Mom and Dad refused to be burdened by nonsense.. they didn’t have the time or energy to put into solving crises, assuaging tears and soothing frustrations The Zero Tolerance policy allowed them to stay in charge of the household and they felt, keep a positive outlook on life.

Outside the house the siblings did fight and argue, however. The older siblings could work with this conflict, contain the emotions and felt freed by it, but Robyn who was a sensitive child did not. She was labelled a ‘Frequent Crier ‘ by the family, due to her tendency to burst into tears and was of course teased about being like this and if the tears continued too long she was,( of course), sent to her room (alone!). Great solution, Mum and Dad!!!

Throughout all of this Robyn learned a powerful lesson. She learned that negative emotion was bad and would not be tolerated. She learned that any feelings she had that were not upbeat, fun or positive must be kept to herself and carefully hidden. She felt ashamed that she had such feelings, and silently vowed never to let them be seen. (to such an extent that she even hid them from herself!)

Robyn learned to withdraw, to stay busy and diverted, watch too much television or over work and to fight off any ‘negative’ feelings.

Robyn didn’t just fight this battle. She lived it. Her life was organised around making sure that she did not reveal, see, know or feel anything negative from herself. It took a tremendous amount of energy. She was bent on hiding the negative shameful part of herself (Robyn’s version of the Fatal Flaw most neglected kid hide deep inside)…..she couldn’t let anyone get to know her too well.

Robyn learned to live alone, to not invite friends around. She hid even her intense loneliness about this from herself and struggled because she knew her parents loved her, so why would she be struggling so much if she was not fatally flawed?

Since adolescence, Robyn had an outside looking in feeling. At age 13, she had started wondering what was wrong with her. She’d had a great childhood, so there was no explanation for how flawed she felt. There was something missing something sick inside of her, a secret void. The only way she could soothe herself was to imagine being dead. Being dead would be such a relief She did not have any intention to kill herself, but she reserved the possibility as a safety net…..Robyn used fantasies of being dead and her secret knowledge of her safety net as her chief method of soothing herself from age 13, all through her adulthood, but she had not breathed a word of it to a single soul.

Jonice goes on to describe how this fantasy and desire was, however, triggered after the night in question Robyn had shared with friends…. how feelings of numbness, emptiness and gloom suddenly began to over take and consume Robyn…As her desperation increased after failed attempts to distract herself with television comedy failed, Robyn reached for the bottle of pills and swallowed them compulsively.

Robyn’s suicide attempt and feelings would most likely make so sense to anyone who knew her because as Jonice explains “the Robyn that everyone else knew and loved was not the real Robyn… She was essentially a time bomb, set to explode periodically”.

Robyn was luckily found by her sister who happened to drop by that day…but many who feel and suffer the way that Robyn did are not so lucky….”they don’t get to share or understand their pain, and they don’t get to explain their final moments to anyone.” They also never really get to know, love or understand their real feelings or true self.

When I first read this chapter in Webb’s book last year I identified with it so strongly. I have not ever committed suicide though often I had cherished that fantasy too. Luckily I got a sense years into sobriety that more was going on underneath my addiction that just ‘defects of character’. Soul sadness, soul loneliness as therapist Tara Brach points out in her book True Refuge are primary feelings that drive us when we come to mistakenly believe “there is something wrong with me”, the fatal flaw which is symptom seven in Jonice Webb’s list of effects of Childhood Emotional Neglect.

So many of us who suffer urgently need to understand it’s roots if we really are ever to recover our true sense of self which contains all kinds of feelings in response to a life which we didn’t choose and is so often influenced by all kinds of toxic, negating and restrictive influences beyond our control.

(For a full list of all 10 symptoms of Childhood Emotional Neglect please see the following post or read Jonice Webb’s book.)

We all need support. We cannot exist in a vacuum and so many of our wounds come out of early relationships so those wounds can only really be healed and explored in relationship. This is something that we may get mixed up about, especially if we had to develop an avoidant style to cope. We can and do on our path of confusion get drawn towards certain spiritual disciplines and then we may be told we have a problem with our ego or need to learn not to ‘attach’.

For a really interesting perspective on this I highly recommend reading Mark Wolynn’s book It Didnt Start With You. Mark had a traumatic relationship with his mother who carried lots of wounds, he went on a spiritual path and it was when he was caught up in meditation in a monastery or ashram he got the inner message that he was never going to find true relief or healing until he reconnected back with his Mum and learned about her life. A lot of his book concerns what happens we learn to block the love we give due to love blocked coming to us from a parent for some reason. Often the root of the blockage or disconnection or even complicated enmeshment which ensues lays several generations back and may be hidden or shrouded in silence. I have a number of posts which share research from that book to back up this point of view.

I was prompted to write this due to some comments back and forward about how much good therapy helps us and to my mind it has less to do with the type of therapy we engage in and more with the person we chose as well as with how accurately our true self and attachment wounds are ‘got’ by the therapist and contained. If you have ever had serious therapy ‘misfits’ or clashes you know how painful these can be. If you have early attachment wounds and a borderline personality style the important of a consistent reliable, emotionally present person in your life is essential.

I listened to the second of a series of radio programmes on Sunday on BPD and the girl interviewed was told she would never recover by several professionals, but she has and part of her story was a story of maternal separation going several generations back. The girl in question was aboriginal and her grandmother or mother was one of the ‘stolen generation’ those kids forcibly removed from their mothers or families by white colonisers ‘for their own good’. As she pointed out in the programme, she carried that wound for the collective and is now healing and addressing it. She is now helping others to come to terms with and understand the deep roots of a borderline personality diagnosis. The programme gave me real hope that things can change for those who suffer in this way. What she mentioned as being most important was the consistent love of a therapist to be available, something I shared about in several posts last year.

In my own life, I know the legacy that inconsistent, unreliable or emotionally neglectful attachments had on me. I was taught by my older sister to bond and seek relief in alcohol and I idolised and idealised her for years. I know she learned this coping style in my family but it got worse over several generations until it reached critical watershed in me. I am so grateful not only for the sobriety I attained at 31 years of age but for the family member who in doing ancestral research gave me essential missing pieces of our multigenerational inheritance about 10 years into my recovery. Up til then I saw myself as the failure, the one who couldn’t cut it, the one who was hopeless or a helpless alcoholic.

All along the way of recovery my higher power helped me try to undo this mistaken belief though. There was the woman who came to me for an astrology reading in 2003 and told me of the book How AA Failed Me. Apologies here to active members of 12 step groups. I did get a lot of help in AA but defects of character and some of the strong moralistic tone of the programme did not help but confused me more. This book which I was never able to find again and which she loaned to me helped me at a critical time not to become what I now called scapegoat identified. AA was though, like everything, not totally good or totally bad, parts of the programme still sustain me and I use them in my life but other parts didn’t explain to me the important missing human attachment dimension of my own psychic wounds and injuries.

For me therapy has been the healing place, a place to be mirrored effectively in my true self, a place to be given good boundaries of care, a place to be myself, to be nurtured, to grow, to freely express all of me and never, never to be shamed ever as I was at times in other therapies. I know how set right I am after a good session, how it wasnt an ego problem really but a problem of a healthy emotionally grounded and aware ego that lay at the root of a lot of my difficulties.

Its been a long road to get here but without that help and support I would never have got this far. And it has helped me to undo the fallacy I was told by certain older sober members that I could only ever look to God for that kind of understanding and care rather than ever fully trust another human being. Not everyone will fail us, and when we find the right person we can finally heal our deeper attachments wound and learn how to trust the right people, developing a deeper inward discrimination for whom is helpful or harmful to us. When we understand how that injury underlay so much that came to pass in our lives we can learn also to let go of self blame which can dog so many of us who were never adequately mirrored, held, affirmed or nurtured in childhood.

I now know a lot of my inner insecurity and fear and descent into addiction from the age of 17 comes from the removal or absence of significant attachments growing up. The early loss of my sister to a new life far away from us was a wound that went deep but one I could not share with anyone or even fully understand at age 3.

When I look at photos of my sister’s wedding with myself in them I look sad and bewildered, like I don’t know what is going on. I am the only child in those photographs and my sister and her new husband left on a boat for a different country the following day. I imagine now the hole that was left by my sister’s absence then and now with the death of my Mum I feel the shadow imprints of that hole, but not as deeply for luckily over these past few years I have managed to reach out more to those I would love to share a friendship or connection with, those who I can say how I really feel and what I am really experiencing inside.

What I noticed over the lead up to my Mum’s funeral following her death was the insecurity and unreliability of many of my familial attachments. My brother was the only fully physically present figure but he was not operating on an emotional level, so when he wanted to extend his support I found myself brushing it off. With other family members I noticed they were just not there or were only there in a very inconsistent way. When they were there I did a sideways dance due to fear and lack of trust

Due to my abandonment history I am not used to either consistency or reliability in attachments or support. I am used to insecure unreliable attachments and those who try to fob me of or gain distance from me. This was made clear to me this morning when I read the chapter Just Like A Timepiece in the book Beyond Borderline : True Stories of Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder.

In this story the sufferer speaks of making her first most significant attachment shortly after her first hospitalisation for the disorder. The doctor she bonded and attached to then left the programme at the hospital and the sufferer then spiralled into addiction. I could see as I read the clear connection between that emotional abandonment and the sufferer’s need to medicate her pain. Luckily seven years later the teller of this story moves to a new town where the doctor who treated her is in practice as a therapist. Through trust and courage she makes the attempt to connect to her and her therapist makes herself available 24/7 which is what one therapist told me years ago is the only thing that works for those of us with deeply disordered and insecure attachment experiences.

Looking back I see how many therapies broke for me when my therapist took a break. I am also wondering at the wisdom of what my therapist told me this week, that by leaving me alone to cope she was helping me to build that resource inside or look to others. Maybe there is a lot of truth in this but a deeper truth is at a time I really needed her 24/7 she refused to be there for me. She told me this week when I went back to see her she was surprised I had come back, coolly and calmly she explained she thought she would not see me again. It would have been no problem for her, but it would have been for me. I would have had to find yet a new therapist, explain my story all over again and I have been with this therapist for 2 years now and that’s a lot of sessions building a knowing and a history.

I felt so sad when I read this story this morning. Of course I was glad for the writer she was able to find such a consistent reliable attachment with her therapist, Dr. Chase. She writes :

Dr Chase and I still continue to meet twice a week at the time of this writing. She is by far the most important person in my life. She has done more for me than anyone else I have ever known. There are still moments when I struggle, and she is available to me at any moment, both night and day. The diagnosis of borderline personality disorder is not an excuse for me. Its is simply an explanation. I have begun to tentatively form friendships , although many times I still retreat within the safety of myself The other day I found myself saying “I like myself.”

And I cry now.

I felt upset this morning that my own therapist does not provide that kind of support. I felt I had no other alternative but to accept her boundaries last week, but that doesn’t mean I think they are right. I think what she did to me over the time of Mum’s death was hard and unfair but I also know she had the best of intentions and understand her reasoning. I am used to giving over in this way. Another person’s will and desire was stronger than my own. She held all the power and control and I accepted it. I could have left to start again with someone new I guess but what I get most of the time from Kat works.

I am going to find other sources of support next year. Like the person who told the story I quoted from above I am now building in my own life growing connections with several people in my own life. I know the fears I have of abandonment relate back to very real experiences of being alone and abandoned when I most needed support. With my Mum’s death around the anniversary of my Dad’s that empty black hole does open up within me some mornings. But the difference is that now, armed with inner psychological awareness I know the need I have to reach out, I can also reach inside for the love and understanding, it is where life has always forced me, so why argue with reality?

Yesterday I was brave enough to visit the husband of a good friend who was part of my trauma past in the aftermath of Dad’s death back in 1986 who had undergone brain surgery to remove a tumor on Thursday in the hospital where I spent 3 months following my accident at the end of 1979. I needed a cup of coffee before I got there and he was doing well. His wife was there and we talked for well over an hour. I thought then as i drove home of how life and recovery is always trying to bring us full circle. Recovery is like a spiral dance in which we pass over and re-experience old ground, pain, trauma and issues but with a new elevation or perspective on them. At times we have to go into the fire and face or front up to those triggers or re-enactments, but armed with the knowledge we gain from our journey we grow in awareness on each revolution around the center of our self and past.

Many of my attachments broke all through out my life. Some broke in later years due to unconscious fears, but many of them also held firm. Those who have loved me have watched me battle with my need to connect amidst enormous fear. They have stayed close but not too close and then there are those who over this most painful time have made real efforts to draw close and be near. Their consistency in being there for me has made me aware that it is safe to trust in world I so long ago learned to doubt or fear.

Maybe it took my Mum’s death for this to all come full circle. I don’t know. I only know I am so grateful all these years later to be living just a little further outside of all of that insecurity and fear that plagued me unconsciously for so many years. I will perhaps always carry deep insecure attachment and abandonment fears but hopefully with mindfulness they will no longer need to dominate my life so unconsciously and I can learn who is secure/safe for me to trust and place my faith in.

Well back here we are my sister, Mum and me, alone again after all the trauma with little Lyra hit, worrying and wondering and feeling how it is to have no loving family apart from each other close. I called my nephew this morning he only texted back everyone is excited and elated, Lyra is now smiling and out of sedation, call you later the text said. I breathed such a huge sigh of relief but today all three of us are feeling the trauma and the void more deeply than ever. I am sure he has a lot going on as his wife’s extended family were flying in to join them all this morning. I am glad Lyra and Gerrard have all of that loving support. But it does drive home how isolated we can be at times.

I do believe separations are a part of life. With Mercury planet of communications very close the astrological heavy weight Saturn (planet of being alone and separate) now with Mercury moving backwards its driving home to me how deeply Saturnian our family is. Those who managed to break away have close bonds, my nephews all have loving partners and families. My brother has a very close bonded family. The rest of us, well our relationships dissolved for one reason and another.

As I look back I see how hard it was for me to understand emotional connection and closeness growing up. Trauma has the affect of fragmenting us anyway and relational trauma is the worst. If you have a trauma and those around you pull close to you and surround you with love you do a lot better. The loved ones may not understand the deeply traumatised person but they may try. In the case of my older sister and I (and my dead sister, too) when trauma hit us and emotions were challenging there was not one partner who stayed around. I hate to say I am a little envious of Lyra being surrounded by all of that love, but I am. With my Saturn Moon I have to carry that burden of solitude and aloneness and realise I will only connect for a time to anyone. Trauma from my own past made my hypervigilant and gun shy, very fearful of being betrayed and abandoned again in any relationship. I see how I have held back due to fear and then became a lone wolf but hungering for love never the less. All the love I give to my own inner child and inner self is important but it doesnt always make up for a hug from others.

Today I am worried for my mother who is alone now after witnessing that trauma with Lyra the other day. Having people close who then go through trauma or leave has been a constant in our family which seems to have been dogged by separations, leavings, emotional absence and loss. I need to find a way to bear all of this with good grace.

I don’t feel disconnected from myself today and I am thankfully not inside that trauma space. I am so very grateful to the caring souls on WordPress who yesterday reached out to me with so much love, thank you Laina, Grizzly Man, 1 Wise Woman, Alexis, and Twinkle Toes. You made getting through yesterday just the little bit easier for me. I am so lucky to have a connection with you and value your support a lot. I was telling my sister today how much being able to write about what is going on and be connected to here and through my blog helps me. I hope to do the same with others, for there are all times we need a hand to hold in the midst of difficulites.

Relational trauma interrupts the bonds that connect us to others, to our heart and to our feelings as well as to ourselves. Trauma creates a schism that can keep us so alone. Trauma fractures our identity and if we are not held it feels as though we are falling through space.

Last night I googled ‘Trauma Vortex’ as its something Peter Levine talks about in his book Waking The Tiger . I found an excellent article by someone who works with the body in trauma. I will post the link to it below.

If we never experience being held in love or connected to when we are in trauma it’s enough to tear our hearts so deeply apart that we may not even survive. I was also thinking today that those of us who are born with fine radar and are highly sensitive are far more likely to struggle in this life. We become more vulnerable to energies around us, we pick up a lot and we may struggle or suffer if we do not recognise this. I could not help but think a lot about this a lot last night as it affected my grand niece. I think it was far too big a trip for her for four days, she was not eating the same as she may have at home. We were at cafes for lunch on several days. Her tummy was a little sore on Sunday night due to this. Little children need us to stay connected to and in tune with them. On Friday I was careful to take her away and spend some time playing and exploring when it got all a bit too boring with the adults sitting around and discussing adult things. I noticed the frown on her face when she didnt like some of the food and was told to eat it up. At that age its so important that our tastes are respected and I know kids need boundaries but they need to be fair ones. I remember being taken out to dinners with Mum and Dad a being fed alcohol when I was only still very young and then wishing I could go home and go to bed but having to wait around. We learn a lot about about how to care for our bodies and souls in childhood by the way others treat us and knowing that we have a right to what we like and need is so important.

Today I am in a much better place than I was yesterday, the sadness at feeling disconnected is very strong anyway as we head towards Christmas, I know its a very common sadness for so many of us. At this time if we don’t come from a happy family its hard to watch those who do, having times together and being connected, however at this time of year no matter how disconnected we do feel we can always reach out to others for connection, to know that someone cares and is there for us is so important. We are relational beings. Even if we are empathic introverts we still have a need to be connected in ways that are not compromising or overpowering for us. Feeling invaded in the past may make us feel gun shy, but there are those out there who will love and respect who we are. Pain of the past can make us self absorbed, especially if we feel others would not understand us. But in the end, at times we have to let it begin with us, when it comes to reaching out. Those of us who can end up faring better than those who can’t.